Yesterday I opened a crate of stuff I’d shipped from Dad’s farm to Haines. It has been in the barn at our lumberyard for two weeks, since it arrived just as I headed off to Homer for a week at The Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. I was inspired by Toni Jensen, Jericho Brown, CMarie Fuhrman, Victoria Chang– and more– really you should read Carry. Everyone should. I finished it on the plane home to Haines from Juneau, and that says a lot, as I was homesick and it was a beautiful day and still Toni kept my attention.
This two year Covid season seems over, although I know cases are high in Haines, Juneau and Skagway where next week I’ll be at the North Words writing symposium– tour ships and no masks and wide open doors– But it feels like the communal weather has finally changed, that spring is here. Or, I guess, since I have been hanging out with poets and word crafters I should be more specific than Covid season, but Covid-era is too long (I hope anyway) and to say it is an interval, or a gap is not right– as life rolled on and we have gained two grandchildren in this time– Emilia in March 2020 and Henry this April– bookends to remember it was not all bad.
We lost Dad, and my friend and neighbor Betty. It was weird to be in the Anchorage airport, with a few hours before the flight to Homer and not be able to call them. That’s what I used to do. Instead I looked at the late Senator Ted Stevens and tried to decide if this was creepy, sitting next to his bronze image on an airport bench, or if it was okay. I took a walk by the sunny windows instead and will wait for another trip to ponder politicians and public art.
Alaskans called him Uncle Ted as a term of endearment. My Father’s cousin, my great-uncle died this winter too — not of Covid– the pandemic did not stop the usual passages– and he left me a good surprise. Uncle Dick loved adventure and swimming, so I used it to buy my dream winter retreat in Tenakee Springs where there is not exactly a lap pool, but there is a public bath– a concrete tank of very hot spring water to soak in.
I know right? Joy. My husband thinks I’m crazy. Wish me luck.
Right now, as I sit at my desk on the stair landing and write to you, he is unpacking the pick-up truck and carrying the pictures, trunk, rug, tables and chairs that I brought home from home, into the extra room that had been my son’s, then a den, then a grandbaby room, and then Papa Bob’s room (his ashes are on the dresser, the same dresser that was in his boyhood home.) Some of the stuff can go to Tenakee, once I do some work– or to my children, or? I’m not sure. I just wasn’t ready to leave them.
All this is a very short way of saying that how, thanks to a community of poets and writers, thanks to sunshine and spring, thanks to easier travel, thanks to new projects and new babies, as Anna Quindlen once wrote: “I woke up one morning and thought ‘I’m enough’.” Well, she wrote one morning. I’m thinking this morning– actually I’m thinking this one afternoon last week is enough, is plenty– that’s when I got to meet Henry on my way to Homer and I stayed another day with him on my way home.
